State Fair by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Phoenix Players directed by Fran Bosly-Craft at Belconnen Community Centre till November 14.
This is a warm and fuzzy musical about family values based on making sure you marry the right person. Set in Iowa, America's mid-west corn and hog farming country, in 1946, State Fair seems to be intended to re-establish old values now that the nasty experience of World War II is over. It's problem is that it is so-o-o nice - with nothing like the guts of Oklahoma or South Pacific.
Fran Bosly-Craft, however, lets the simple story tell itself without artifice, ably assisted by Jenny Hill's sensibly contructed choreography and Sally McRae's small rhythmically precise band. The result is a "Grand Night for Singing" and indeed "It Might As Well Be Spring", though I have to admit that none of the other songs are memorable - except the "Sweet Hog of Mine" barbershop quartet (actually called More Than Just A Friend) in which Ian Davenport, Frank Farrell, Kit Collins and John Van de Graaff absolutely excel themselves in praise of pig relations.
Libby Warren and Adrian Gillmore play the young lovelorn leads Margie and Wayne very well, Warren standing out as the most accomplished actor and singer in the cast. In the end, though, the value of this production is that the feeling of community - which is a sentimental American stereotype on stage - is a reality for Phoenix Players. The strongest scenes are when the whole cast from 10 year olds to people of an age not to be recorded here are singing and dancing along together. The sense of commitment is measured by Ian Davenport - actor, production manager, set constructor and painter - who took leave from his paid work for a month to get this show on the road. And Bosly-Craft, long known around this town's theatrical traps, nowadays makes the trip in for rehearsals, she tells me, "from the other side of Goulburn".
You last saw State Fair in 1962 as a film with Pat Boone. I missed it then, but like me you can catch the Australian premiere of the stage version at Belconnen Community Centre and enjoy a pleasant light spring entertainment from Phoenix Players.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 29 October 1998
Thursday, 15 October 1998
1998: Ravens in Wonderland by Heaven Muecke
Ravens in Wonderland by Heaven Muecke. National Film and Sound Archive Theatre, October 15 - 17, 1998, 8pm.
Muecke's work is unpretentious theatre. Its success lies in its not pretending to be grand theatre; yet it is not insignificant by any means. Ravens in Wonderland is the work of a young genuine writer / director in touch with the dark side of fairy stories which are all too easily sentimentalised.
Rather than be drawn into the usual theatre groups - though recognising and appreciating her teenage experience in Canberra Youth Theatre - Muecke is an independent producer, working on this occasion with student colleagues with minimal financial support from the ANU Students' Association. My sense is that she is right to work this way because her work is original and in a certain way whimsical. Keeping control of the process from writing through directing the actors, creating the set, costumes and visual effects, including being technical operator, is a huge task even for a fifty minute piece; but it works for Muecke.
Of course that means it works for us in the audience. We are drawn quickly into a quirky wonderland. We half imagine we recognise characters but, as they play out unusual reflections of a mix of stories, we are amused by unexpected incongruities which suddenly touch our deeper feelings about love and betrayal.
Perhaps The Little Match Girl is the saddest story. No-one will buy her matches; she can't go home, for her father will beat her; a nasty boy steals her shoes; in the morning she is found dead in the snow. Muecke turns Hans Christian Andersen's character into a Coppelia-child, played very effectively by Rebecca Lathbury, whose humour and humanity links the disparate scenes of the play both structurally as a piece of theatre and emotionally as we enjoy her openness and recognise her naivete in ourselves.
I found the play fascinating, and disturbing, for its absurdist - almost Dada - form combined with metaphorical suggestion in the language and the imagery. I hope that Muecke keeps working and can find among the younger trained actors about town a compatible group with whom she can develop her work. It's already well worth seeing and I look forward to more in the future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Muecke's work is unpretentious theatre. Its success lies in its not pretending to be grand theatre; yet it is not insignificant by any means. Ravens in Wonderland is the work of a young genuine writer / director in touch with the dark side of fairy stories which are all too easily sentimentalised.
Rather than be drawn into the usual theatre groups - though recognising and appreciating her teenage experience in Canberra Youth Theatre - Muecke is an independent producer, working on this occasion with student colleagues with minimal financial support from the ANU Students' Association. My sense is that she is right to work this way because her work is original and in a certain way whimsical. Keeping control of the process from writing through directing the actors, creating the set, costumes and visual effects, including being technical operator, is a huge task even for a fifty minute piece; but it works for Muecke.
Of course that means it works for us in the audience. We are drawn quickly into a quirky wonderland. We half imagine we recognise characters but, as they play out unusual reflections of a mix of stories, we are amused by unexpected incongruities which suddenly touch our deeper feelings about love and betrayal.
Perhaps The Little Match Girl is the saddest story. No-one will buy her matches; she can't go home, for her father will beat her; a nasty boy steals her shoes; in the morning she is found dead in the snow. Muecke turns Hans Christian Andersen's character into a Coppelia-child, played very effectively by Rebecca Lathbury, whose humour and humanity links the disparate scenes of the play both structurally as a piece of theatre and emotionally as we enjoy her openness and recognise her naivete in ourselves.
I found the play fascinating, and disturbing, for its absurdist - almost Dada - form combined with metaphorical suggestion in the language and the imagery. I hope that Muecke keeps working and can find among the younger trained actors about town a compatible group with whom she can develop her work. It's already well worth seeing and I look forward to more in the future.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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